May 23, 2021

KHL Victor Crowned


KHL Victor Crowned
You know a league has made it when it has its own Monopoly game. Amanda Shirnina

It is truly beautiful to watch a winning team in the immediate afterglow of the championship-clinching game. Both fists of the winning coach fly into the air. If we're talking hockey, the skaters on the bench flood over the boards, onto the ice, and into a pile of humanity.

Even if it is not your team—as long as your team was not on the losing end of the match—the pure joy on the faces of the players and coaches is an inspiring sight to behold.

Omsk Hawks Arena
Enter this arena only at your own peril! | Wikimedia Commons user Shipulin2020

This time, it was Omsk's top hockey team, Avangard (Vanguard), throwing their fists into the air. The club was founded in 1950, and its mascot is the Hawk. Its championship-winning captain and most famous player, Ilya Kovalchuk—a former NHLer—was the first player to skate the Gagarin Cup around the ice to the sound of "We Are the Champions." The Omsk head coach was one Bob Hartley, a French-Canadian and former NHL coach.

Every spring, the best teams in the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) battle for the Gagarin Cup—yet another way the memory of the Soviet space hero never dies in modern Russia.

Omsk Arena Interior
The view from inside the Hawk. | Wikimedia Commons user Ofsimnupi

The KHL is the successor to the Russian Superleague, which lasted from 1996 to 2008 and was itself the successor to the Soviet Championship League. The lowest-ranked teams in the Superleague were demoted at the end of each season to the Higher League (Vysshaya Liga), creating some chaos in the league's identity and continuity. The league's rebranding as the KHL was part of a campaign to make Russian hockey similar to the United States and Canada's NHL. Former Russian minister of sport (2002-2008), Viacheslav Fetisov, who had played for the New Jersey Devils and the Detroit Red Wings, played a critical role in NHL-izing the Russian game.

Today, the KHL abounds with non-Russian players. Eighteen of the league's twenty-three teams are located in Russian cities; the other five are in Minsk, Belarus; Riga, Latvia; Helsinki, Finland; Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan (formerly known as Astana); and Beijing, China. In contrast to the drab affair that was a Nizhny Novgorod Torpedo game in 2005 (see photograph below), Russian hockey arenas in 2021 resemble – and even surpass in some ways – the spectacle of NHL hockey.

Nizhny Novgorod Arena Interior
Don't upset the guard by having too much fun!; at a Nizhny Novgorod Torpedo game, 2005. | Amanda Shirnina

The KHL has a dedicated television channel and produces team magazines. Cheerleaders mingle among the crowd, along with dressed-up mascots. The last names on the jerseys are written in English to both attract non-Russian spectators and reflect the fact that the league's teams are not limited to Russia.

As in the NHL, the KHL holds four playoff series rounds to determine a winner: conference quarterfinals (sixteen teams), conference semifinals (eight teams), conference finals (four teams), and cup final (two teams). Each series is a best-of-seven affair, making watching hockey more of a commitment than, say, the NFL Super Bowl. The Gagarin Cup sat in the arena at ice level guarded by two men for the entire final series, as if tempting both teams to play their best.

Gagarin Cup
To infinity and beyond! | GennadyL,Wikimedia Commons

The final series began with a goal by Omsk, a harbinger of things to come. Perhaps Omsk won the cup because it has a player named Kirill Gotovets (meaning ready or ready-made), who is always ready for anything. In the final Game 6, Omsk led 1-0, while its opponent, Moscow TsKA, kept the pressure on until the final horn sounded.

The winning captain, Ilya Kovalchuk, has played in the NHL for the Atlanta Thrashers, New Jersey Devils, Los Angeles Kings, Montréal Canadiens, and Washington Capitals. He was drafted first overall in the 2001 NHL draft. Although a great player, Kovalchuk seems not to have much club loyalty and has bounced back and forth between North American and Russian teams throughout his career. Two days after winning the Gagarin Cup with Omsk, he terminated his contract with the club—a mutual decision. His face has already disappeared from Avangard's online roster.

Ilya Kovalchuk
A stylish Ilya Kovalchuk. / Дмитрий Садовников, Wikimedia Commons

Bob Hartley, the French-Canadian coach of Omsk, graciously said in an interview after the clinching game: "We just beat an unbelievable hockey club!" A reporter capturing the post-game euphoria told Hartley, in English, "Say something in Russian!" His response humorously captures his current grasp of the Russian language: "Spasibo bolshoe, druzya! Omsk i Avangard. KHL – otlichno!" ("Thank you so much, friends! Omsk and Avangard. KHL – excellent!") His players either know English well or struggle to keep up with his instructions!

Hartley, whose first language is French despite his anglophone-sounding name, coached NHL teams Colorado Avalanche, Atlanta Thrashers, and Calgary Flames. In Calgary, he won the coach of the year award (Jack Adams Award) in 2015 before being fired a year later over a terrible string of losses. He became the head coach of the Latvian national team before landing in Omsk.

At the parade through the streets of central Omsk a few days after victory, fans displayed a big banner for Hartley reading, in the Cyrillic alphabet, "Gud dzhob" ("Good job").

SKA Shop Gagarin
Hockey loves Gagarin...for some reason...at the SKA St. Petersburg team store. / Amanda Shirnina

Frankly, we are happy to see Not-Moscow win. The bulk of the league's money is in Moscow and St. Petersburg, where it is far more likely that TsKA, Dynamo, or Spartak (of Moscow), or SKA (of St. Petersburg) will be able to buy the best Russian and foreign players – and frankly, keep them from playing in the NHL.

A few days after Omsk won the championship, Russia started celebrating another hockey event, the Night League Hockey Festival, in Sochi. This year marked the event's tenth anniversary. The amateur Night Hockey League consists of 970 teams and 19,000 players across Russia, including a women's "Amazon" division.

You Might Also Like

Sochi +5
  • March 01, 2019

Sochi +5

Views of Sochi, five years after the close of the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in that southern city.
New Life Breathed into the Museum of Hockey
  • February 28, 2021

New Life Breathed into the Museum of Hockey

Moscow's stunning Museum of Hockey and Hockey Hall of Fame is a hidden gem with new investors ready to keep it going – hopefully for a long time to come.
Sports, Sleep, and the State Duma
  • February 04, 2021

Sports, Sleep, and the State Duma

This week's Odder News features Russian athletes making international news, low-tax sports gear, and more opportunity for restful shut-eye.
Like this post? Get a weekly email digest + member-only deals

Some of Our Books

Survival Russian

Survival Russian

Survival Russian is an intensely practical guide to conversational, colloquial and culture-rich Russian. It uses humor, current events and thematically-driven essays to deepen readers’ understanding of Russian language and culture. This enlarged Second Edition of Survival Russian includes over 90 essays and illuminates over 2000 invaluable Russian phrases and words.
The Best of Russian Life

The Best of Russian Life

We culled through 15 years of Russian Life to select readers’ and editors’ favorite stories and biographies for inclusion in a special two-volume collection. Totalling over 1100 pages, these two volumes encompass some of the best writing we have published over the last two decades, and include the most timeless stories and biographies – those that can be read again and again.
A Taste of Russia

A Taste of Russia

The definitive modern cookbook on Russian cuisine has been totally updated and redesigned in a 30th Anniversary Edition. Layering superbly researched recipes with informative essays on the dishes' rich historical and cultural context, A Taste of Russia includes over 200 recipes on everything from borshch to blini, from Salmon Coulibiac to Beef Stew with Rum, from Marinated Mushrooms to Walnut-honey Filled Pies. A Taste of Russia shows off the best that Russian cooking has to offer. Full of great quotes from Russian literature about Russian food and designed in a convenient wide format that stays open during use.
The Little Golden Calf

The Little Golden Calf

Our edition of The Little Golden Calf, one of the greatest Russian satires ever, is the first new translation of this classic novel in nearly fifty years. It is also the first unabridged, uncensored English translation ever, and is 100% true to the original 1931 serial publication in the Russian journal 30 Dnei. Anne O. Fisher’s translation is copiously annotated, and includes an introduction by Alexandra Ilf, the daughter of one of the book’s two co-authors.
A Taste of Chekhov

A Taste of Chekhov

This compact volume is an introduction to the works of Chekhov the master storyteller, via nine stories spanning the last twenty years of his life.
The Moscow Eccentric

The Moscow Eccentric

Advance reviewers are calling this new translation "a coup" and "a remarkable achievement." This rediscovered gem of a novel by one of Russia's finest writers explores some of the thorniest issues of the early twentieth century.
At the Circus

At the Circus

This wonderful novella by Alexander Kuprin tells the story of the wrestler Arbuzov and his battle against a renowned American wrestler. Rich in detail and characterization, At the Circus brims with excitement and life. You can smell the sawdust in the big top, see the vivid and colorful characters, sense the tension build as Arbuzov readies to face off against the American.
Maria's War: A Soldier's Autobiography

Maria's War: A Soldier's Autobiography

This astonishingly gripping autobiography by the founder of the Russian Women’s Death Battallion in World War I is an eye-opening documentary of life before, during and after the Bolshevik Revolution.
Murder at the Dacha

Murder at the Dacha

Senior Lieutenant Pavel Matyushkin has a problem. Several, actually. Not the least of them is the fact that a powerful Soviet boss has been murdered, and Matyushkin's surly commander has given him an unreasonably short time frame to close the case.
The Frogs Who Begged for a Tsar

The Frogs Who Begged for a Tsar

The fables of Ivan Krylov are rich fonts of Russian cultural wisdom and experience – reading and understanding them is vital to grasping the Russian worldview. This new edition of 62 of Krylov’s tales presents them side-by-side in English and Russian. The wonderfully lyrical translations by Lydia Razran Stone are accompanied by original, whimsical color illustrations by Katya Korobkina.
White Magic

White Magic

The thirteen tales in this volume – all written by Russian émigrés, writers who fled their native country in the early twentieth century – contain a fair dose of magic and mysticism, of terror and the supernatural. There are Petersburg revenants, grief-stricken avengers, Lithuanian vampires, flying skeletons, murders and duels, and even a ghostly Edgar Allen Poe.
93 Untranslatable Russian Words

93 Untranslatable Russian Words

Every language has concepts, ideas, words and idioms that are nearly impossible to translate into another language. This book looks at nearly 100 such Russian words and offers paths to their understanding and translation by way of examples from literature and everyday life. Difficult to translate words and concepts are introduced with dictionary definitions, then elucidated with citations from literature, speech and prose, helping the student of Russian comprehend the word/concept in context.

About Us

Russian Life is a publication of a 30-year-young, award-winning publishing house that creates a bimonthly magazine, books, maps, and other products for Russophiles the world over.

Latest Posts

Our Contacts

Russian Life
PO Box 567
Montpelier VT 05601-0567

802-223-4955